Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition - Review

If you were to ask me what media franchise has had the biggest impact in my life, Digimon would undoubtedly be the first that comes to mind. It’s hard to explain exactly why, but of every fantasy world, every story told, Digimon stands above each and every one of them for me. From the day I first laid my eyes on an episode of Digimon Adventure, back in the very early 2000s, to the day I type this review, this beautiful, dumb, incredible series has been a huge part of who I am. I first played Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth on the PS Vita (RIP) back in 2016, and its sequel(ish) on PS4 in early 2018. They quickly became some of my very favourite games. And now, a few years on, both games have finally come to Switch in one neat little package: Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition. And honestly? It’s the best it’s ever been.

But let’s start with the elephant in the room: yes, Digimon has pretty much always been compared to Pokemon, and Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition is poised to hold that comparison to light in 2019, releasing not far out from Pokemon Sword and Shield. It’s easy to see why; both series rose to fame in the late 90s, both formed part of a cultural phenomenon in the west that saw children-focused anime skyrocket to success in English-speaking countries. And yes, both featured hundreds of adorable fictional creatures that battled against each other and evolved to grow stronger. It’s a comparison that makes sense, but one that I feel does a little bit of a disservice to both series. I’ll touch more on that a little later. But for now, let’s roll with the comparison.

Similar to Pokemon, the Cyber Sleuth games follow the story of teens caught up in a potentially world-ending tale, and the only way to stop that threat is to team up with adorable creatures that turn into much less adorable creatures with knives for hands… okay so that last bit isn’t exactly like Pokemon, but you get what I mean. Unlike Pokemon, however, there are no gyms to defeat, no badges to earn, and no fictional region to explore. That’s because every single locale in Cyber Sleuth is based on a real world location in Tokyo, such as the iconic Nakano Broadway, the scramble crossing in Shibuya, and the pop culture hub of the city, Akihabara.

It’s an interesting approach, and one that’s different from some previous games like the Digimon World games, which largely take place in the Digital World — a world built in the depths of cyberspace. Of course, throughout your story, you’ll spend plenty of time in cyberspace yourself — this is a game about digital monsters after all — but for the most part, your setting is the very real world.

Also unlike Pokemon is the way your Digimon evolve and grow stronger. As your Digimon battle, they’ll gain experience, that part is the same, but their evolutions are a little less set in stone. While a Pokemon can only really evolve into one thing (split evolutions and things like Eevee being the exception), Digimon almost always have a huge variety of creatures to evolve into. In order to get to each of these evolutions, you’ll have to meet some requirements, such as a particular HP or attack stat, and once it’s evolved, it’s reset back to level 1. After that, you can train back up to evolve it again, devolve it back into the same thing, or devolve it back into something entirely different and explore a whole new line of evolution. It’s a deeply fascinating system where, with enough planning and careful training, evolving and devolving, technically any given Digimon can end up being any other given Digimon in the game. Unfortunately, it also means that, in order to hit a lot of late-game evolutions, you’ll have to grind back and forth just to hit the stat requirements — as some of the stats you earn while evolved are retained when you devolve back. Some people (myself in previous playthroughs included) get so into this experience that they need spreadsheets to manage it all, but for this playthrough I decided to just go with the flow and see what sticks. Neither way is a bad way to play, and there are plenty of resources out there on the internet to help you maximise your experience with the game. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure of sorts; Digimon can be exactly as simple or as complicated as you’d like it to be.

What’s less of a choose-your-own-adventure is the story progression, which is very much set in stone. It’s a tightly directed, very linear story, and it does a perfectly fine job of telling a story, though it does tend to overstay its welcome a little bit by the end of each game’s 90-hour playtime. In Cyber Sleuth, your mostly-silent protagonist teamed up with Kyoko Kuremi, a headstrong detective who prides herself on uncovering the mysteries of the world with a strong interest in cyberspace. With a half-cyber body and a pocket full of hacking tricks, you and Kyoko take on cases dealing with oddities that range from a malfunctioning air conditioning unit to the murder of a young school girl. It goes to some very weird places, but it’s a genuinely interesting and compelling setup, and the little glimpses of a deeper story beneath each case are a wonderful driving factor for playing “just one more case” — as I told myself many times at 3am in the morning.

Hacker’s Memory serves as a sequel to Cyber Sleuth… but not really. While it definitely should be played after Cyber Sleuth, it’s more of an interquel than a sequel — that is, its events take place during Cyber Sleuth, exploring some of the events that happen behind the scenes from a different perspective. In Hacker’s Memory, you play the role of an amateur hacker whose account was compromised by a much less amateur hacker. In order to take back what’s yours, you team up with Hudie, an old-school hacking team who’s been around since the advent of cyberspace. As a member of Hudie, you act as a hacking mercenary of sorts; you’ll receive jobs from various other members of the public, higher-level hackers, and even a few familiar faces, and you have to get it done, no questions asked. Personally, I think Hacker’s Memory has a little bit of an edge over Cyber Sleuth when it comes to storytelling. Not only does it benefit from an already-developed world, which lets it skip the formalities and get right into the good stuff, it also gives you the opportunity to explore the seedy underbelly of the Digimon universe. That’s something that hasn’t really been touched on all that much in previous media for the franchise, and fans of Digimon (such as myself) get to see a whole new level of intrigue and drama. And hey, who doesn’t like playing as the kind-of-bad-guys-but-also-morally-okay team?

In terms of the Switch port, there’s really nothing big to complain about. It loads quickly, it looks as good as it does on PS4, it features the very minor touchscreen interactions that the Vita version did. I mean, it is what it says on the tin: it’s the Complete Edition of these games, with everything good about every version of the games all rolled into one. But there are a few very minor issues.

The first is the localisation. The first game, Cyber Sleuth, is mostly fine when it comes to translation, but there are a few points where it’s an absolute mess. There’s little text interactions between the player and other characters, including Digimon, and almost all of these are an absolute mess translation-wise. They’re all incredibly stilted language that no English-speaking person would ever use, or quizzes where you answer the right question and you’re told you got it wrong, because the question is more nuanced in the original Japanese than the English translation reveals. These translation issues are largely absent from the main game, but there is one sticking point of importance: characters have a tendency to use two terms interchangeably, “Eater” and “Bakemon.” The former is the primary enemy and threat of the game, and the latter... is a random Digimon that doesn’t really have any relevance. It’s small, but it can get really exhausting trying to figure out if characters are talking about the enemy or the Digimon. And you might think “well, if Bakemon is really just a random Digimon then you should assume they’re always talking about the Eaters,” and that would be right… except for the several times that actual Bakemon show up in the story. To summarise: it’s a hot mess of a translation in places, and it gets incredibly grating as time goes on.

Hacker’s Memory fixes a lot of these problems, but it comes at a price. While 99% of the localisation is absolutely flawless, the extra effort put into it means that some of the translations that were fine but maybe a little off in the first game are now different, a little more localised. The biggest example of this is the translation of an early-game location. In Cyber Sleuth, it’s known as Galacta Park, while in Hacker’s Memory, it’s called Junk Plaza. And because Hacker’s Memory relies on you having played the previous game and already knowing many of the locations, this bizarre change in translation is left for the player to figure out on their own, with characters directing you to Junk Plaza without a worry in the world. These localisation issues — both in Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory — were present in the PS4 and Vita versions of the games, so it’s not as if it’s gotten worse in the Switch version, but it would’ve been nice to see Bandai Namco update the text for clarity and consistency for what’s supposed to be the definitive release of these games. But hey, maybe next time?

There’s not much you can say about Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition, other than it is exactly what it says on the label. It’s two excellent Digimon games tied up into one neat little package, and there’s not much else a Digimon fan could ask for. Sure, the translations are a bit janky, and it gets a little bit grindy at times, but if this is your first step into the Digimon world, or your thousandth in a lifelong Digimon journey, it’s hard to go wrong with the Cyber Sleuth games. For all their faults, they’re still just wonderful experiences.